


it is known

by sadrobotgirl



Category: Heneral Luna (2015)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Historical Inaccuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 12:43:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16137497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadrobotgirl/pseuds/sadrobotgirl
Summary: Set during pre-colonial times. Pole and Miong and arranged marriages.





	it is known

**Author's Note:**

> REPOSTED for friends. This is a work of fiction, written for shits and giggles, originally posted at the height of my HL obsession (good times) back in 2015. Please do not redistribute or share with the people depicted in this story. That's just NOT cool and makes everyone uncomfortable.
> 
>  
> 
> Also back when I posted this originally, I got shit for mentioning "cheese" and I was so ashamed of myself. Though I suppose is fantasy ABO land where anything can happen, much less a wheel of cheese making a sudden appearance (call it trade baby lmao) so anything is fair game.
> 
> Forgot the original title but it was saved under IT IS KNOWN on google docs so I decided to go for it

Today is the day of the ceremony. Pole rises at the crack of dawn, a little earlier than usual, and surveys the fleet of boats docking inland from the highest peak in the village. There are half a dozen of them, built with sturdy hulls and sails that whip the breeze like linen hung from a washing line.

The men that descend them: their bodies sleek and well-fed, ropey with muscle and bearing the marks of their clan on their arms and backs. Men from the North with skin brown from the sun on the water, scarred from battle. People moving in groups, laughing and shouting. The wind brings the sound of their voices high up to where Pole is watching them in silence, squatting on his haunches on a stretch of grass. 

Their words are rough as stone and strange-sounding, so heavily accented Pole has trouble parsing through their meaning. 

The sun breaks through the clouds and Pole feels the warmth of it on his bare shoulders. When he finally stands to his feet, his thighs ache from the strain of staying in the same position too long. He rolls his shoulders back, feels the tension ease from his muscles.

These men from the North have come bearing gifts of good tidings, treasures from their land: chests of gold and silver are unloaded from the hold, bags of grain and iron, heavy wheels of cheese. Before the next dawn their chieftain’s firstborn and heir is to wed Pole and bed him.  

Tradition, of course, and as a gesture of peace.

Pole runs.

*

Pole runs. He runs, past the cluster of longhouses at the base of the hill where the unmarried warriors live, past the potter’s hut, the pens where they keep all their animals, then the smithy’s, whose home is built from sod and stone. His father’s land is vast, but there is only so much terrain that is habitable. Two seasons ago a fire had swept through the forest, rippling through their homes in one clean stroke, forcing them nearer to the shore. These days they’ve built their homes from mud and stone, sturdier now that they are nearer to the water and vulnerable to seasonal winds.

Pole’s feet take him to his cave – a dwelling he has taken for himself and outfitted with furs and cloth dragged from his father’s hut. He’d found it while wandering away from his father’s hunting party a while ago, hidden behind a dense copse of trees at the lip of a steep hill. Later he’d returned to embellish it with items smuggled from home: woven baskets to hold the fruit he’d stolen from the garden, an assortment of knives and spears from the smithy’s to use for hunting, jars of butter, pots of salve, pans of ointment he’d grounded himself from leaves nearby, some for healing, others for defense. He kept his most prized keepsakes in jars buried in the dirt: gifts from suitors, mostly, and his mother’s old jewelry, finely crafted necklaces made of bone and topaz.

He would seek solace here whenever arguments with his father escalated to threats of exile, hunting his own food for weeks and stewing in sullen moods until he’d take pity on the old man and return home. He hated life at court, where he was often treated like a child: scolded for wrestling in the mud with other boys, for climbing trees, for getting his ribs bruised in scuffles. 

For acting,  _ always _ , out of line. The last fertile omega in an age. The court wants him untarnished when they present him for mating.

Marriageable, was the word –  nothing short of a pawn to unite the Northern and Southern clans. Pole had grown up with sisters, but none of them had been omegas. He imagined life would have been different had his mother still been alive and not died in his childhood; surely she would see reason and not marry him off to a stranger who barely spoke their language and knew nothing of their way of life.

Pole throws himself onto his back on the furs, huffing. The cave is dark and smells of damp, the walls slick with morning dew. He whiles away the time whittling at a pipe he’s been working on for a while – a gift, supposedly, for his husband, as was the custom. You were supposed to present something you had made yourself on the eve of the wedding and Pole could think of nothing else but a pipe; he wasn’t like his sisters who were practiced in the art of weaving, and he couldn’t mould clay into any discernible shape even if his life depended on it. The pipe is almost fully formed now, narrow and smooth after weeks of chipping at it with a hunting knife. When his hands start to hurt, Pole sharpens his blade. A few strokes on the sharpening stone and strop and the knife glides smoothly again, cutting clean through the wood like butter.

Pole doesn’t emerge until late afternoon, squinting at the sky painted orange with low hanging clouds. His father must be looking for him by now but it won’t kill him to wait a few more hours. Pole will make his appearance when he’s ready, when exhaustion has dampened both his and his father’s ire.

He makes his way to the nearby stream, watching schools of fish beat each other bloody swimming in opposite directions. If he were a better hunter, he’d have caught one barehanded but his education had been focused solely on healing and the arts. He squats at the embankment, watching his reflection ripple in the water: his face is too soft, his mouth shaped like a girl’s. He has his mother’s eyes, his sisters often say, her love of words, but he also has his father’s nose and his temper.

Pole twists his face into hideous expressions before flicking a hand across the surface of the water, scaring away the fish. Maybe his husband will find him hideous and refuse to marry him, though at this point it seems like fanciful thinking. This union has been set in stone, agreed upon by the clans long before Pole had been born.

Pole dips his feet into the water, sighing when his toes brush soft sand and moss. He strips, folding his small clothes and setting them down on the sand, his body pale like a fish’s in the strange afternoon light. He eases into the water, until the water rises up to his chin, the ends of his hair floating around his face like seaweed. No sound other than the water rushing over the rocks, the winds in the trees, the late afternoon squawk and call of birds. He shuts his eyes before making a dive into the water.  

The sound of movement in the trees makes Pole startle out of his thoughts. He doesn’t move at first, till he’s certain, then there it is again: louder this time, a human sound – and then rustling just within his eyeline. Pole darts for his hunting knife hidden among his small clothes, his feet slippery on the embankment as he takes on a defensive stance: weapon raised, teeth bared, ready to strike. He shivers as the water dries on his bare skin.

Pole glances up when he hears the same noise again, fingers tightening on the hilt of his knife. He lowers his weapon when a man steps forward from the trees, hands raised in a gesture of peace. 

No man he knows, for certain, but easily recognizable by the embellishments of his armour – one of them, then, from the North. A nobleman from the looks of it, his sleeves woven from the finest cloth. He has the bearing of a noble too— a proud set to his shoulders, a tilt to his chin. He lifts a hand meant to placate Pole, and takes tentative step forward, speaks in a language not unlike Pole’s own but not quite the same either, the sound of his words like skittering stones. “I – mean – no – harm,” he says haltingly, “You – do – not – have to –be – afraid.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Pole says, largely because this is true. But he doesn’t put his weapon down, or lower his guard. The man is nearly twice his size and is of a considerable height; he can easily take Pole down if Pole isn’t careful. Pole is an umated omega, and there are men, others foolish enough, alphas, who have tried to –

“What’s your name?” asks the man. He says something else too but everything sounds ugly in his dialect so Pole misses half of it.

“Pole,” Pole says, tapping his chest. The man nods, and then tips his chin at the knife in Pole’s hand. “Pole,” he says, with the wrong inflection. “Would you care to lower your weapon? I’m only here to get a drink of water, nothing more.”

“I would,” Pole amends, “But you have yet to give me reason to trust you.”

The man tilts his head to the side, eyes lit with amusement, before he nods again, a quick efficient movement. “My name is Miong—”

“ _ Miong _ ?” Pole repeats. He thinks,  _ what a strange name _ , and Miong laughs, making Pole believe he’d said that out loud.

“This is my father’s land,” Pole tells him –  _ Miong _ . “And this is my father’s stream; I forbid you to take from it.”

“Your father?” Miong says, taken aback. His eyes sweep over Pole briefly, and for a moment Pole becomes aware of every strand of hair on his body, the very fact he’s bare as a newborn. He’s used to being appraised, but that isn’t what Miong is doing, not quite.

“Very well then,” Miong says with a courteous bow. “I can see where I’m not wanted.” He gives Pole a tight smile, before averting his eyes. “It was a pleasure meeting you. I apologize if I have caused offense.”

When he leaves, Pole releases his grip on his knife and dresses with haste.


End file.
